It’s
been said that, in the West, whiskey’s for drinkin’ and water’s for
fightin’. A corollary to that adage might be: When it comes to water,
nothing’s simple.
A case study of that corollary is the water – 2,000 acres of it – sitting
off Highway 140 near Klamath Falls, Ore. The water got there June 7 when the
Geary Dike sprang a 100-foot-long leak and millions of gallons of Upper Klamath
Lake flooded farmland, pastureland, wetlands and three holes of a golf course.
At first blush, the prudent next step would be to fix the dike, pump the water
back into the lake, and return everything to its pre-flood condition.
Think again. Remember, this is water we’re talking about.
First, you need a roll call.
Two landowners are involved. About two-thirds of the submerged land belongs to
the Running Y Ranch, a resort and retirement area owned by the Jeld-Wen Co., and
the other is the Geary Family Trust. The farmer who lost his crop and several
farm implements when the water flooded is also involved.
The Oregon Department of Transportation is involved, too. ODOT is responsible
for the highway, the main route between Klamath Falls and Medford.
So is the electric utility, PacifiCorp. Its predecessor, the California Oregon
Power Co., signed an agreement in 1920 to maintain the dike.
Then there’s the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the lake levels, and the
Klamath Irrigation District and its member farmers, who depend on the water for
their crops.
And don’t forget the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for
the endangered shortnose suckers that might have been flushed through the burst
dike and across the road.
Simple? Hardly.
Each company, agency, individual and trust has a different take on what should
happen next.
Jon Barkee, development manager of the Running Y, has his now 15-hole Arnold
Palmer-designed golf course and other land to think about. He told the Oregonian
newspaper he believes PacifiCorp needs to repair the dike.
“The permanent solution is going to be decided by the lawyers,” he told the
newspaper.
However, PacifiCorp is studying how much responsibility, if any, it has for
rebuilding the dike.
“A lot has happened since 1920, and reasonable parties can interpret the scope
of that agreement in different ways,” PacificCorp spokesman Dave Kvamme told
the newspaper.
While they sort out that, another possibility has been raised: Let the water
remain and let some of the land revert to wetlands and for additional water
storage.
Caught in the middle – literally – is ODOT, which must keep the road open.
Already, the department has raised the road surface to keep water off, but the
flooding could eventually undermine the integrity of the roadbed, forcing the
department to re-engineer it, raising and widening the road and adding
guardrails, Randy Bednar, ODOT assistant district manager, told the newspaper.
Also caught in the middle are the farmers who depend on the water from Upper
Klamath Lake and the rest of the system. They find themselves in the unusual
situation this year of having a plentiful supply of water – a stark contrast
for 2001, when the headgates were closed and their irrigation water was cut off.
“We haven’t lost any water. It’s just in a different place,” Cecil
Lesley, the Bureau of Reclamation’s chief of water and lands on the Klamath
Project, told a Capital Press freelance writer.
Getting that water to where it needs to be, for the irrigators, landowners and
many others affected, is the question now that the initial damage has been
assessed.
As they say here in the West, the answer to that question will likely be a long
and complicated story.
